Nobel physicist David Gross wins $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize

On 18 April 2026 the Breakthrough Prize Foundation named David J. Gross of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the recipient of a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The $3 million award, presented at a ceremony in Santa Monica, recognised a lifetime of contributions to theoretical physics, from the strong force to string theory, and his tireless advocacy for basic science around the world.

Gross's most famous discovery came in 1973. Working with his graduate student Frank Wilczek, and in parallel with David Politzer, he showed that the strong force, which binds quarks together inside protons and neutrons, becomes weaker as quarks get closer and stronger as they move apart. This property, called asymptotic freedom, explained why quarks are never seen on their own and became a cornerstone of quantum chromodynamics, the modern theory of the strong interaction. It earned the three physicists the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics. Gross later helped develop the heterotic string, one of the leading attempts to unify all of nature's forces, including gravity.

He has been equally influential as a builder of science. Gross directed the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, served as president of the American Physical Society, helped establish physics institutes in India, China and South America, chaired the Solvay physics conferences for a quarter of a century, and in 2025 co-wrote a 40-year plan for physics for the US National Academies.

Born in Washington, DC, in 1941 into an American Jewish family, Gross moved to Israel as a boy when his father, the social scientist Bertram Gross, joined an American advisory team and then stayed to help found the Hebrew University's business school. David Gross studied physics and mathematics at the Hebrew University before his doctorate at Berkeley, and for many years he has directed the university's Jerusalem Winter School in Theoretical Physics.

The 2026 Breakthrough Prizes, funded by technology philanthropists including Yuri Milner, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, awarded six prizes in all.